Liturature

True Feelings True Feelings Ryan Dale ENG125: Introduction to Literature Allorah Wyman 02/15/2010 True Feelings I have chosen three great poems to write about. The first poem is Theodore Roethke – "My Papa's Waltz," the second poem is Rainer Maria Pilke – "The Cadet Picture of my Father," and my final poem choice is Paul Lawrence Dunbar – "We wear the mask,". I will be writing about how these poems impact my life and how this choices made me feel. True Feelings This part of the poem gave up a better picture of the way that they were dancing. "The hand that held my wrist, Was battered on one knuckle, At every step you missed, My right ear scraped a buckle"3. The first line say that the son must have been small or short when this took place. To hold the sons wrist and not his waist. The battered knuckle on the father would mean he was a hard working man or could always be hurting himself either at work or at home. The next line suggest that the father was not dancing very well and was dancing like a mad man just all over the place. The son hurting his ear at every step mean he must be waist level with his father. It also mean that he was right up against his father trying to dance with him. The final part of this poem "You beat time on my head, With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed, Still clinging to your shirt"4.It feels like the father was playing and having fun by keeping time on his sons head. The fathers hand may support my thoughts on the father was a hard working man with a drinking problem. Another meaning of this line is that the True Feelings My second choice for me was Rainer Maria Pilke – "The Cadet Picture of my Father,". This poem is more personal to me. My father and I are both in the military, so this poem had a deeper meaning for me. "There's a absence in the eyes. The brow's in touch with something far. Now distant boyishness and seduction shadow his enormous lips, the slender aristocratic uniform with its Franz Josef braid, both the hands bulge like gloves upon the saber's basket hilt. The hands are quiet, they reach out towards nothing."5. This first part of the poem is giving the reading a verbal picture of his father in hopes that they can create an image if him in there mind. He is describing his father with such great and loving details. From his uniform to how his uniform looks on him. I love the detail he gives about his father's military uniform, he gives it with such love and pride. He also gives us an idea of how his father looked in general. The second part of this poem gives us an idea of what the author was thinks about when he wrote this poem. "I hardly see them now, as if they were the first to grasp distance and True Feelings disappear and all the rest lies curtained in itself, and so withdrawn, I cannot understand my father as he bleaches on this page"6. This part feels to me like me might not have been as close to his father as he would have liked. Maybe like he never understood his father. Even that his father and him have never seen eye to eye on anything during his life. This part also tells me that his father is not longer with him in body but, with him in soul. My final poem is Paul Lawrence Dunbar – "We wear the mask,". This poem to me has the most meaning of any poem I have read. " We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we True Feelings smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties"8. This part of the poem to me say that no matter how we think we are this is always a mask of our true self's. It says to me that all humans wear a mask it's just part of live and who we are that we never show our true self's. The mask is how we had our true self and how we hide everything from the world. "Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs' Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask"9. This part of the poem only further supports my thoughts that we all wear a mask to hide our true self from the world. This feels to me like we can never show our true self to anyone. It says to always wear the mask no matter what. To let no one ever see your true side or your true enter feelings. "We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise, We sing, but oh the clay is vile, Beneath our feet, and long the mile, But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!"10. The final part of this poem says to me that no matter if we are smiling or crying you must always wear the mask. That no matter how you are truly feeling on the inside you must always wear and keep the mask. No, one is ever to know how you truly are or how you truly feel. True Feelings chose for this paper was people not being them self's. That everyone wears a mask and that we always seem to have one on. It's our way to protect us from the outside. In the second poem I picked was about the author was writing about his father in the military. With having a military background I know that they teach you to all be the same. So there for they teach you to keep on the mask. To always wear the mask and conform and be like everyone else. The third poem I think works hand and hand with the first two poems that I wrote about. This last poem has taught us that we are wearing a mask whether we think we are or not. The first poem shows us that the father was not afraid to take off his mask and truly be himself. The second poem is about a father in the military that made us all seem to be the same. In closing I truly am glad that I chose the poems that I did. All three really go hand in hand with each other and show us how we really are. And that no matter what we do with our life's we do the best that we can. True Feelings All references came from Literature by: Robert DiYanni Mc Graw Hill 1,2,3 and 4-Theodore Roethke – "My Papa's Waltz," p.773 5,6 and 7-Rainer Maria Pilke – "The Cadet Picture of my Father," p.1179 8,9 and 10-Paul Lawrence Dunbar – "We wear the mask," p.1101